Lightning crashes sang Ed Kowalczyk ominously on Saturday evening. And yes, the collective fears come true on Sunday morning: the third day of Bospop is canceled due to the expected storm. This brings an early end to the 2023 edition of the Limburg festival. Porcupine Tree therefore unintentionally became the resounding conclusion of only two days of Bospop.
Photography Bert Treep
Bospop has a prog tradition to uphold. Greats such as Dream Theater, Opeth, Anathema and, yes, Porcupine Tree have regularly appeared on stage in Weert. The latter band was there in 2005, although frontman Steven Wilson – who would later also perform solo at Bospop – can’t remember anything about it, he says on this Saturday evening.
That evening starts a few hours earlier with a performance in the sympathetic tent Ray Wilson, the forgotten ex-singer of prog giants annex stadium rockers Genesis. It was he who once had to make Phil Collins forget. A thankless and impossible task too, but the collaboration between Wilson, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks did produce a beautiful and highly underrated Genesis record: Calling All Stations. Incidentally, Wilson’s ‘own’ band Stiltskin is also very worthwhile. Today, however, the emphasis is mainly on covers: Wilson not only sings tracks from Genesis, but also solo work from Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. Too bad, because his own Genesis work may also be there and would have made the show just a little more authentic.
While Live then does its thing on the main stage and runs out for almost fifteen minutes, the more than respectable ‘warm-up’ for Porcupine Tree’s performance starts in the meantime. The Polish Riverside will play in the Bospop tent, which can be seen as one of the very successful followers of tonight’s main act.
At 11:20 PM it’s time. In the pitch dark, Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison step on stage on behalf of Porcupine Tree, incidentally without live bassist Nate Navarro, who is absent due to private problems. His contribution will be made tonight by an invisible bass player, says frontman Wilson (read: a band that walks along).
That loss is not too noticeable. After all, Porcupine Tree’s music leaves little room for improvisation; it is rock played with mathematical precision that, thanks to that accuracy, manages to captivate the audience without any effort. Steven Wilson is like a hypnotist who only needs to snap his fingers once to transport his audience to another dimension.
Via the great Harridan, from the comeback album Closure/Continuation, good oldies – if you can speak of that with this band – The Sound Of Muzak (from In Absentia) and the also new Chimera’s Wreck, we descend further and further into the depths of Wilson’s soul. The absolute highlight is the performance – you could almost think in Mozartesque terms – of the seventeen minute long epic Anesthetize (from Fear Of The Blank Planet). Wilson warns Bospop: ‘This is gonna be long.’
He’s still a special guy, that Wilson. You wonder what is going on in that big brain. Between songs he is cynically light-hearted in his announcements and bridges, but when playing there is no room for jokes. Sometimes this means that there is little air in this show. It’s all dark, ominous; almost dystopian. But that’s just the timbre of this band; the vocabulary with which Wilson writes his music.
If you listen carefully, you will also hear a waterfall of musical influences; from symphonic rock to metal and from free jazz to even folk. You would have to ask a psychiatrist about it, but the fact that Wilson invariably refuses to wear shoes could indicate that we are dealing here with a free spirit that does not allow itself to be limited by anyone or anything.
If you’re not born for prog rock right away, a Porcupine Tree show will indeed take a long time. But if you manage to keep your attention and let yourself be carried away, you will be stunned by the abundance of beautiful melodies, exciting breaks, throbbing riffs and (also) beautiful visuals. Seeing Porcupine Tree is a total experience; one of the better live experiences you can have as a music lover. If you’re open to it, that is.
Seen: Bospop 2023, July 8 (23.15) on the Mainstage.
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2023-07-09 13:52:30
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